A few days ago, I started a process that involves very heavy file processing operations that take anywhere from 10 minutes on the low side to 30 minutes on the high side. Wanting to be as efficient as possible and …

WARNING: This post involves live mains electricity and is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS! Do not attempt this project on your own unless you are qualified to do so. I advise you to engage a licensed electrician to help you build this test …

A couple of months ago I decided to move my company’s Asterisk PBX system from one of our physical data-center servers to Amazon’s AWS EC2 Platform. We had been using Trixbox since 2006, but the Community Edition of that product …

Testing batteries seems like an overly simple topic for a blog post, but unless you have a good quality battery tester, then chances are you’re not testing your batteries correctly. When testing with a multimeter, most people will simply take …

One of my ongoing home automation frustrations is the interface between my Ademco Alarm Panel and the Raspberry Pi I use to monitor the panel’s bus traffic. The problem that I have is a termination of the USB connection between …

I’m a big fan of Amazon’s EC2 platform and long ago migrated all of my servers to its “cloud”. I’m also a realist when it comes to security and take all of the reasonable precautions I can to limit my …

Wireless networks have become ubiquitous. We use them at home, work, mall, airport, coffee shop and just about everywhere else we go. When setting up a wireless network, it’s wise to spend some quality time considering how you plan to …

I’ve been running a pfSense router on a small form-factor PC for a few years and have been happy with my setup. What I don’t like though is that the PC is relatively loud and draws way more power than …